The advantages of Open Tatura

The V-shaped Open Tatura system has the following advantages: • Tree height (2.76 meters/9 feet) and tree width (2.00 meters/6 feet) are built simultaneously in the first year.

• Most of the canopy can be reached from the ground.

• Tree vigor is distributed over four leaders. There are 7,840 leaders per hectare from 1,960 trees, or 3,172 leaders per acre from 793 trees.

• High light interception (60 to 65 percent) and good exposure of leaves and fruit to sunlight. The more sunlight an apricot receives, the better the quality of the fruit at harvest.

• The canopy is a continuous thin wall that is no more than 20 centimeters (8 inches) thick, giving the fruiting units more than 50 per cent exposure to ­ambient light so that they perform well.

• The open, thin, and short canopy ensures good distribution of sunlight and uniform maturity of fruit.

• The uniformity of the leaders makes it easy to regulate the crop, because each leader is the same as the others and has the same number of spurs and fruit. An estimated yield can easily be translated into how many pieces of fruit of a certain size should be left on each leader. For example, to obtain a marketable yield of 27 tonnes per hectare (10 tons per acre) at a density of 1,960 trees per hectare (793 trees per acre), four leaders per tree, and an average diameter of 54 millimetres (2.16 inches), 44 pieces of fruit are needed on each leader. In this calculation, I have allowed for 10 percent of fruit to be Class 2 and culls.

• Unskilled workers satisfactorily and efficiently perform routine orchard operations, such as pruning, thinning, and harvesting, because the structure of the tree is simple, uniform, and repetitive.